Leonard Pitts | At war against workers

7:52 PM,
Apr. 3, 2011

Dr, Martin Luther King, Jr., who was killed in Memphis 43 years ago.

Written by

Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald

Once upon a long time ago, a tired man faced an audience of public workers. They were on a wildcat strike, demanding the right to bargain collectively and to have the city for which they worked automatically deduct union dues from their paychecks. The city's conservative mayor had flatly refused these demands.

"You are doing many things here in this struggle," the tired man assured them. "You are demanding that this city will respect the dignity of labor." Too often, he said, folks looked down on people like them, people who did menial or unglamorous work. But he encouraged them not to bemoan ...